A place for couples dealing with illness to find resources and advice, hear stories, and discover support. Whether the illness is chronic or acute, the result of disease or accident, couples can learn strategies for coping with the changes illness brings into our relationships and our worlds.
The information provided in this blog is for educational and support purposes only. It should not be used as a substitute for seeking professional care.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Learning to Redirect Your Anger

The following is a guest post by a fellow traveler on the road of couples dealing with illness. Helena Madsen is a wise woman who is the founder of Chronic Marriage whose mission is to help couples with chronic illness build extraordinary marriages. Helena is a wife, mother, counselor, and writer who lives with Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy. Get her free resource guide: For Better or Worse: A Guide to Talking About Illness in Your Marriage. In this guest post, Helena offers perspective and advice about managing anger in your relationship.

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If there’s
one emotion that seems to surface repeatedly in marriages with chronic illness,
it’s anger!

You’re angry
at your illness and all that you’ve lost – strength, vitality, roles and
routines and specific plans for the future.

You’re angry
at your spouse for not always understanding what you need.

You’re angry
that others view you as less dependable or competent because of your
limitations.

Your spouse is
angry that his wife is no longer interested in sexual intimacy.

He’s angry
that most of the household and parenting duties now fall on his shoulders.

He’s angry
that he can’t alleviate your physical pain no matter how hard he tries.

Both of you
have plenty of reasons to be angry.

Anger is not bad.It’s merely an emotion and a signal that something is
uncomfortable, wrong, or undesirable.

Unfortunately,
many people do not process their anger well in the heat of the moment.When you’re angry at the illness, you often
rage at your spouse instead.Misdirected anger causes you to wound the person you love the most – your
mate.Repeatedly lashing
out does two things – it weakens your relationship and makes you appear unsafe
to your spouse. Both are tragedies.

Is there a
better way to handle anger over your illness?Yes.

The most effective way is to distance
yourself from the illness.

By that I
mean regard your illness as a distinct entity apart from yourself. View it as
the third party in your marriage with its own needs and demands.

Marsha and
Bob struggled with misdirected anger for years after she was diagnosed with Multiple
Sclerosis (MS).Whenever Bob
expressed any frustration with Marsha’s illness, Marsha interpreted it as a direct
affront on her character.The
message she received was that she was somehow a failure or disappointment for
having MS.Feeling hurt, Marsha
would unleash her anger on Bob who would then strike back.

Neither
Marsha nor Bob knew how to talk about the illness in a healthy way.Most of the time, they chose not to
talk about it until they got to the point where their pain was intense enough that
it threatened to swallow them up.

In
counseling, they learned how to take a step back and view the MS as separate
from themselves.Their counselor
suggested they view it as an uninvited yet permanent guest in their home.This idea of a demanding houseguest who
refuses to leave was so helpful to Marsha and Bob that they decided to give him
a name - George.Whenever one
of them was angry or frustrated with the MS, they gave themselves (and each
other) permission to express their true feelings about George.It allowed them to remain true to
themselves and yet not wound each other at the same time.We may view naming
an illness George as silly but for Marsha and Bob, it was
effective.They were at last able
to separate their anger towards each other from the anger towards the MS.

What are some other helpful ways to
avoid misdirected anger?

- Remember that anger is a secondary emotion

Anger isn’t
the first feeling to come, although it’s generally the first one we express
outwardly.Wherever it surfaces,
another emotion already existed.Because
emotions like rejection, loneliness and sadness are so strong and painful, we
substitute anger because it makes us feel less vulnerable.

We falsely
believe that anger helps us feel in control when we’re feeling out-of-control
and powerless. The first
question we need to ask ourselves when we feel ourselves getting angry is“What’s
going on inside that’s making me angry?" To resolve your anger, you need to identify the root reason for it.

- Consider using the Anger ABCDs

The Anger ABCDs help you deal with your anger in a basic and easy-to-follow format:

Available at Amazon and local bookstores Click on Book to Learn More

About Me

In November, 1999 I was whacked with a mysterious chronic pain syndrome that took me out of my life. With the help of my husband, my dog, and a combination of western and alternative approaches, I have a new life that includes working, writing, mountain climbing, smiling, and managing pain. I learned a lot along the way, especially about illness and the couple relationship. I'm also a psychotherapist, a business consultant, and have written a book about couples and illness, which was published in March 2013 (Roundtree Press)

“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”Susan Sontag